DRINKING WATER

EPA-chemical EPA Researchers Develop A Chemical Category-Based Approach To Prioritize PFAS For Data Collection

The Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) requires reporting, record-keeping, testing requirements and restrictions for chemicals of concern, including PFAS. To help meet these requirements, U.S. EPA researchers have developed a chemical category-based approach to help prioritize PFAS for further data collection efforts.

DRINKING WATER CASE STUDIES AND WHITE PAPERS

  • Disinfection Tech Trials: How Calcium Hypochlorite Feeders Won Over Long Beach Township WTPs

    In 2012 Long Beach Island, New Jersey, was pummeled by the catastrophic storm surge of Hurricane Sandy. Three of the town's four water plants were badly damaged. Plans were made to rebuild the facilities to higher standards to withstand potential storm impacts. 

  • New Polyethylene Piping System Provides Clean Water For 150,000 Residents

    Providing large cities with drinking water is never an easy task. Outdated systems can cause problems such as leakages or contaminations.

  • The New Way Is Two-Way – Implementing A Revolutionary R450 System

    Located on Lake Michigan 12 miles north of downtown Chicago, Evanston was named in 1857 for one of the founders of renowned Northwestern University, which predated its surrounding municipality by a couple of years.

  • Changxing Power Plant Debuts The World's First Forward Osmosis-Based Zero Liquid Discharge Application

    Desalination Technology Transforms 650 m3/day of Abused Industrial Wastewater

  • Tackling Arsenic With A Cost-Effective Strategy

    Arsenic presents a wide array of negative health impacts, which is why it is such a big concern for many municipal water systems. 

  • Vital Fire Suppression Line Remains Live While AVT EZ Valve Is Installed

    A major Texas-based refinery provides significant feedstock flexibility and product diversity to the area’s operations. The plant dates to the early 1900s and following upgrades now produces more than 125,000 barrels per day. A vital element of any refinery is its ability to be constantly ready to respond to a fire, so when the refinery found an inoperable valve on its 12” carbon steel fire suppression line and was in need of a way to add a valve to their system without shutting down the line, their maintenance and repairs contractor, ISS, suggested installing an AVT EZ Valve.

  • Halifax Water Uses Advanced Pressure Management To Reduce Leakages

    Halifax Water (HW) partnered with Mueller for a performance trial of advanced pressure management and the Sentryx™ Water Intelligence Platform.

  • Cutting Energy Consumption Through Remote Leak Detection

    As the U.S. water sector sharpens its net-zero strategies, the link between leakage and carbon should not be underestimated, writes Tom Cork, Channel Sales Director at technology company Ovarro.

  • Innovative Communication Tool Enables Robust And Contact-Free Control Capabilities

    Two-way wireless communication can provide a wealth of benefits for municipal water utilities, including command and control abilities that underpin a wider smart city infrastructure. However, most tools currently on the market do not provide the flexibility and uncompromising speed that are necessary to enable these capabilities. The newly released Mueller® Mi.Net® LoRaWAN® (LW) node, by comparison, allows two-way data communication to take place within seconds instead of hours.

  • 4 Tips For Building Meter-Related Revenue The water meter industry operates on revenue and the modern utility is both a business and a public service. This article deals with the business and revenue side of the water industry. I don’t question the ability of the modern water utility to produce safe, high-quality water. However, I am concerned about the service side, since fairness to the end users of our product and fairness to the utilities who produce this very high-quality product is important and closely related to the revenue issues. It is our job to collect the revenue to which we are entitled by the application of fair business practices and the use of accurate and cost-saving measurement devices. I will talk about building revenue by avoiding revenue loss. By Floyd S. Salser, Jr., CEO, MARS Company

DRINKING WATER APPLICATION NOTES

DRINKING WATER PRODUCTS

Recordall® Fire Hydrant Meters are designed for use in measuring potable cold water from a fire hydrant or other non-permanent installation where flow is in one direction.

Improve your accuracy ranges in schools, hospitals, retail centers and more with our OMNI™ Compound (C²) water meters. The most technologically advanced, large water meters on the market, OMNI C² meters provide longer service life than all other comparable meters. And you don’t have to be concerned about sustained flow rates because there are no restrictions, thanks to their continuous operating range. These meters are similar to our OMNI™ Turbo (T²) models, but OMNI C² meters have a wider flow range.

The Arkal Super Galaxy is a high-flow rate, self-cleaning, automatic disc filter. It is practical for water and wastewater treatment plants, central water systems for irrigation, large cooling tower power plants, ballast water, and saltwater, as it handles desalination. In addition, it controls algae and reduces hydraulic filtration degrees to less than 20 microns. Its vertical and horizontal installation options accommodate all space issues.

The AMERICAN Series 2500 Ductile Iron Resilient Wedge Gate Valve is available with ALPHA ends in sizes 4” -12”. The valve is designed for use in drinking water, sewage and fire protection systems as well as irrigation and backflow control systems.

Where the most challenging of detection capabilities are required for quality assurance, critical process control or the protection of a precious process catalyst from poisonous impurities, no other laser analyzer can match the capability of this analyzer in performance.

NoMonia is a dual-stage engineered biotreatment process that relies on naturally occurring bacteria. Typically, the amount of ammonia that can be oxidized during the natural nitrification process is limited by oxygen availability and its saturation level in the water.

LATEST INSIGHTS ON DRINKING WATER

DRINKING WATER VIDEOS

Runoff from farmlands can carry nutrients, insecticides and sediment that impact source water for downstream communities.

Architect Kate Orff sees the oyster as an agent of urban change. Bundled into beds and sunk into city rivers, oysters slurp up pollution and make legendarily dirty waters clean — thus driving even more innovation in "oyster-tecture." Orff shares her vision for an urban landscape that links nature and humanity for mutual benefit.

New sensor offers continuous monitoring, immediate detection of lead.

The Hanna Instruments 98703 portable turbidity meter is perfect for stormwater testing.

Bill Gates challenges Jimmy to taste test water from the Omniprocessor, which turns sewage into clean drinking water.

ABOUT DRINKING WATER

In most developed countries, drinking water is regulated to ensure that it meets drinking water quality standards. In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administers these standards under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA)

Drinking water considerations can be divided into three core areas of concern:

  1. Source water for a community’s drinking water supply
  2. Drinking water treatment of source water
  3. Distribution of treated drinking water to consumers

Drinking Water Sources

Source water access is imperative to human survival. Sources may include groundwater from aquifers, surface water from rivers and streams and seawater through a desalination process. Direct or indirect water reuse is also growing in popularity in communities with limited access to sources of traditional surface or groundwater. 

Source water scarcity is a growing concern as populations grow and move to warmer, less aqueous climates; climatic changes take place and industrial and agricultural processes compete with the public’s need for water. The scarcity of water supply and water conservation are major focuses of the American Water Works Association.

Drinking Water Treatment

Drinking Water Treatment involves the removal of pathogens and other contaminants from source water in order to make it safe for humans to consume. Treatment of public drinking water is mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the U.S. Common examples of contaminants that need to be treated and removed from water before it is considered potable are microorganisms, disinfectants, disinfection byproducts, inorganic chemicals, organic chemicals and radionuclides.

There are a variety of technologies and processes that can be used for contaminant removal and the removal of pathogens to decontaminate or treat water in a drinking water treatment plant before the clean water is pumped into the water distribution system for consumption.

The first stage in treating drinking water is often called pretreatment and involves screens to remove large debris and objects from the water supply. Aeration can also be used in the pretreatment phase. By mixing air and water, unwanted gases and minerals are removed and the water improves in color, taste and odor.

The second stage in the drinking water treatment process involves coagulation and flocculation. A coagulating agent is added to the water which causes suspended particles to stick together into clumps of material called floc. In sedimentation basins, the heavier floc separates from the water supply and sinks to form sludge, allowing the less turbid water to continue through the process.

During the filtration stage, smaller particles not removed by flocculation are removed from the treated water by running the water through a series of filters. Filter media can include sand, granulated carbon or manufactured membranes. Filtration using reverse osmosis membranes is a critical component of removing salt particles where desalination is being used to treat brackish water or seawater into drinking water.

Following filtration, the water is disinfected to kill or disable any microbes or viruses that could make the consumer sick. The most traditional disinfection method for treating drinking water uses chlorine or chloramines. However, new drinking water disinfection methods are constantly coming to market. Two disinfection methods that have been gaining traction use ozone and ultra-violet (UV) light to disinfect the water supply.

Drinking Water Distribution

Drinking water distribution involves the management of flow of the treated water to the consumer. By some estimates, up to 30% of treated water fails to reach the consumer. This water, often called non-revenue water, escapes from the distribution system through leaks in pipelines and joints, and in extreme cases through water main breaks.

A public water authority manages drinking water distribution through a network of pipes, pumps and valves and monitors that flow using flow, level and pressure measurement sensors and equipment.

Water meters and metering systems such as automatic meter reading (AMR) and advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) allows a water utility to assess a consumer’s water use and charge them for the correct amount of water they have consumed.